by Walter Chaw
Britain's Hammer Studios all but defined the period horror film from
the late-Fifties on, making matinee idols of Christopher Lee and Peter
Cushing as Bram Stoker's Dracula and erstwhile vampire hunter Van
Helsing. But musty is what most Hammer productions remain (with notable
exceptions like Quatermass and the Pit), and as the
drive-in exploitation ethic of Herschell Gordon Lewis began to redefine
the limits of what could be shown with regards to gore and nudity in
the United States (arguably, the European films that found currency in
the Sixties with a more sophisticated audience had as much or more to
do with the "opening" of America's notorious piety), the studio found
itself distressingly out of touch--Merchant/Ivory doing The
Matrix.

With Countess
Dracula and The Vampire Lovers, both
released in the early-'70s in, ironically, heavily-edited versions, Hammer
Studios introduced Ingrid Pitt as the face of their new ethic, the
Polish sexpot baring her bosom in a pair of fledgling splatter flicks
that married Hammer's dusty sensibilities to a few exploitation
elements to a general lack of success. In hindsight, the studio would
have been best served sticking to its guns rather than making broad
concessions to the spirit of the times. The elements that work best
about these late films are still the fog-shrouded boneyards, the
deserted villages, and Peter Cushing; Pitt naked is nice, but adds
little besides cult appeal to the already niche proceedings. That being
said, The Vampire Lovers is clearly the superior of
the two films, managing a level of Sapphic eroticism that provides the
piece with meaty enough subtext to appeal to the civilian (read:
non-fanboy) element.

Countess
Dracula is a retelling of the story of 17th-century Hungarian noblewoman Erzsébet Bathory, who, believing that
bathing in the blood of peasant women (and, eventually, women of lower
noble birth) was the secret to eternal life, was allegedly responsible
for the death of more than one-hundred women over the course of her
cosmetological reign of terror. Having nothing at all to do with
Stoker's Dracula, Countess Dracula
is the sort of film that tells the overly familiar tale in an overly
familiar way, all billowing curtains and screaming corsets, with Pitt
in fright makeup half of the time. Professionally mounted if almost
completely pulse-less, the film's small spark--provided by Lesley-Anne
Down as the Countess's daughter-with-bad-timing--is overwhelmed by
plodding pace and enough melodrama to upset a runaway carriage. Of note
is an early moment in which a peasant is trampled by the Countess's procession that amuses with the flood of grieving children ("Father!
Father!") vomited up by central casting. It's nearly as funny as the
description of the cat-beast that Pitt appears to transform into in the
The Vampire Lovers: "It had...it
had enormous...enormous eyes."

The
Vampire Lovers, as horror/exploitation films go, is leaps and
bounds superior to the stuffy Countess Dracula.
Favouring wide-eyed starlet performances and breathy pronunciations, it
makes fine use of the Hammer fog and Harry Robinson's breathless
orchestral score. A pair of pretty neat beheadings share time with a
pair of full-frontal shots of Pitt emerging from a bath and, later,
seducing a stuffy governess. A retelling of Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla, embraced as something of a landmark in Lesbian horror fiction,
the picture is actually quite overt in its homosexual-fear themes, with
each of the women victims lulled to their doom and each of the men
essentially raped by a vengeful succubus.The bisexual element in
Erzsébet Bathory's story (she was rumoured to have taken many women
lovers, including her aunt) finds itself echoed herein--a nice echo
that binds the two films in this double feature, and one that I have to
admit to finding surprisingly erotic. Something about virginal girls in
whalebone corsets encouraged to disrobe by violet-eyed Polish vamps...
It's hard to pinpoint.

Following the
rampage of ancient vampire Carmilla (Pitt) as she kills Peter Cushing's
daughter before working her way through the household of another nobleman
unwisely away for a visit in the country, The Vampire Lovers
is an excellent showcase for Pitt as she shares a moment centre-stage,
seducing a parade of nubile girls eager to be introduced to the world
of sensuality, one Color Purple moment at a time. Although its middle devoted to the relatively bloodless machinations of the
immortal seductress, its prologue and conclusion do feature a
satisfying amount of geysering blood and the standard
pain-verging-on-orgasm death throes of the eternally damned. It's telling that while the picture is unlikely
to raise much of an eyebrow in the gore department, the nudity of the piece, as tasteful as it is, would still be
considered shocking in modern mainstream American film. The problem
with both movies is that they're almost wholly without surprise, their
plots progressing along staid lines, necessitating the craft of the
individual pieces to dictate its worth. The early days of style over
substance, in other words. As the format of the DVD release invites
comparison, The Vampire Lovers, which contains a
few black-and-white dream sequences that are genuinely harrowing, is
veal to Countess Dracula's chop steak.

THE DVDMGM outdoes itself
with the audio-visual presentation of Countess Dracula,
stored on one side of a double-feature flipper with The
Vampire Lovers. Letterboxed at 1.66:1, the print is lovely and
largely unmarred, though without anamorphic enhancement, the transfer
does seem a little peaked. The original monophonic audio track is reproduced
here, as in The Vampire Lovers, in two-channel mono with
clean fidelity. For as clean as the picture looks, it sounds as vibrant
and sharp. A feature-length yakker featuring Pitt, director Peter
Sasdy, and screenwriter Jeremy Paul is full of almost blue reflection,
Pitt in particular distressed that the film isn't more respectful of
the events upon which it is based. Her concern for the nameless victims
of the infamous fiend, and what a populist "fluff" piece does to their
memory, feels genuine and, for that, is really quite touching.

MGM presents The
Vampire Lovers in a beautiful (beautiful!) 1.78:1 anamorphic
video transfer that is sharp and lush while retaining a filmic quality as seductive as Pitt in evil action. Flesh tones, in
particular, are vibrant and natural. A yakker featuring Pitt, veteran
British director Roy Ward Baker, and screenwriter Tudor Gates,
moderated by Hammer historian and author Jonathan Sothcott, is lively
and fascinating--almost more for the lack of perspective possessed by
the venerable trio as Sothcott tries to draw them into an academic
discussion of the lesbian, let's call them "overtones," of the piece.
While watching naked Pitt embrace a naked waif as music swells, or naked
Pitt throwing out her arms to soon-to-be naked governess, the three are
pathologically unwilling to acknowledge that there are Sapphic
"elements" to the piece. Baker, in particular, goes to great pains
expressing his inability to see the lesbian aspect of either the film or the
Le Fanu while Pitt says that the love scenes are just an especially ardent version of female bonding. Which, I guess, they are. Pitt charms
again, however, in her recollection of shooting a vamp attack in the
middle of January, clothed in a thin nightie: "I didn't feel any cold,
I was shooting a scene of passion and it was...it was wonderful."

Side two also
features excerpts read by Pitt from Le Fanu's short novel, underlying a
series of production and publicity stills--by far the most innovative
presentation of a photo gallery that I've ever seen. Pitt, sounding a
little frail throughout all the special features, lends a whispery
conviction to the extended reading that compels. Trailers for Countess
Dracula and The Vampire Lovers accompany
the respective films, with the whole package ensconced in a keepcase
adorned with the films' deliciously pulpy poster art. The disc is a
must-have for genre, Pitt, and Hammer fans and a serious archival entry
from MGM, who should be applauded for the obvious care and effort they
put into the preservation and restoration process. Originally published: October 6, 2003.

THE BLU-RAY DISC - THE VAMPIRE LOVERSby Bill Chambers Scream Factory's Blu-ray release of The
Vampire Lovers is not going to become anybody's demo disc, but there is
something transporting about the presentation. The 1.85:1, 1080p transfer (misidentified as 1.78:1 on the cover art) comes
from a print that hasn't undergone any obvious clean-up--light scratches and pinholes, those
little white dots created by light shining through punctures in the print,
abound, and some scenes, particularly those shot in fog-enshrouded exteriors at
night (like Ingrid Pitt's ghostly waltz through the woods), look a few optical
generations removed from the bulk of the footage. Grain is constant but not
displeasing; the overall effect is like seeing the film on rep, or in its
umpteenth week at the grindhouse. Contrary to the advertised running time of "+/- 88 minutes," this is the 91-minute uncut version MGM restored
for DVD, and which required a lot of hocus-pocus on their part to undo
quasi-censorship à la the solarization effects that originally rendered the
decapitations illegible. On Blu-ray, the unevenness of the source material shines
through, but also prominent are a depth of colour and a dynamic range that were
mostly sacrificed in standard-def. The attendant 2.0 mono DTS-HD MA track begs
to be turned up yet otherwise contains no obvious flaws.

Returning from the "Midnite Movies"
DVD are the audio commentary and segment with Pitt reading Le Fanu's "Carmilla" over
production stills, though said stills get an HD bump here. New to the platter, Ballyhoo Motion Pictures' "Femme Fantastique: Resurrecting The
Vampire Lovers" (10 mins., HD) and an interview with the enchanting
Madeline Smith (20 mins., HD). The former invites a panel of experts, including
British genre critic Kim Newman and "Carmilla" historian John-Paul
Checkett, to provide context for the production and its place in the so-called
Karnstein Trilogy, as well as to pontificate on the film's considerable
eroticism. Like Ballyhoo's featurette on the Vampire Circus Blu-ray, the virtues of the piece are almost toppled by hyperactive editing, replete with cornball gothic
flourishes that reduce Hammer to "The Hilarious House of
Frightenstein". Smith's interview, on the other hand, could probably stand
a bit of pruning, but she reflects with wisdom on her time as a Hammer starlet, from bloating
her modest bosom to studio specs by eating nothing but yoghurt for two weeks
(she claims that her breasts ballooned while the rest of her stayed rail thin)
to being as "gormless" as her alter ego, having fallen for the
producers' fib that any nudity she did would only be seen in Japan.
Nevertheless, she calls Baker a lovely man and says the crew treated her like
"family" no matter her state of undress. A separate photo gallery plus a trailer (HD) and radio spot
for The Vampire Lovers, both, round out the BD. Note that Countess Dracula is due out on the format from Synapse, street date pending.